


wormwood and wire

by rosesburnedalive



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Canon-Typical Emotional Constipation, Fluff, Happy Ending, Internalized Homophobia, Intricate Rituals and Literary References, Mutual Pining, Rated T for Trashmouth, Slow Burn, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, should be titled: reddie's hot girl summer, theyre all 20-22, this turned into HGTV but with the losers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-01-29 19:27:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21415417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosesburnedalive/pseuds/rosesburnedalive
Summary: Bev knocks her shoulder against his.“Richie imprinted on you like some half-witted, nicotine addicted duckling in second hand Doc Martens.” The smirk on her face tells Eddie that she finds this observation both amusing and entertaining. Great.“That’s…scarily accurate.”Or, it’s 1996 and Bev’s uncle owns a summer house called Blackthorn Manor that sits in the woods of upstate Maine near the small town of Monmouth Falls. It's old and practically falling apart; which happens to be the reason why Bev volunteers to spend the summer before her senior year of college fixing it up. What happens when she brings a few friends along to help?
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 38
Kudos: 76





	1. prologue

**prologue**

“The emotion is Janus-faced: we are torn between a nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.”

_ — Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter _

“I will remember your small room, the feel of you, the light in the window, your records, your books, our morning coffee, our noons, our nights, our bodies spilled together, sleeping, the tiny flowing currents, immediate and forever, your leg my leg, your arm my arm, your smile and the warmth of you who made me laugh again.”

_ — Charles Bukowski, Raw With Love _

* * *

February 3rd, 2016. Seattle, Washington. 2:34am. 

Richie keeps a tin box under his bed. The box, a worn and battered thing, sits under his bed like a corpse of another life. It’s small and the paint has chipped with age but the words “_Scaferlati Levant Superieur”_ are legible in a clear, deliberate font. He had found it in the attic of Blackthorn under a pile of cable-knit sweaters and wool pants, and he really hadn’t known why he had taken it. Hell, he still doesn’t. But he’s glad he did.

In it is a well-loved leather notebook, filled with musings and memories and half-formed dispositions jotted down at three in the morning, a button, a bottle cap, a dried flower, and stacks and stacks of polaroids he’d taken over that summer of 1996 tied together with multicolored rubber bands. He doesn’t have to look at any of it—he memorized it all years ago. 

Out of everything, though, the one thing he has never let himself memorize is the letter. He can count the number of times that he’s read it on one hand—for that, he only needs three fingers. He’s achingly conscious of the fact that it’s a little pathetic, really; how little he’s able to read of it without losing himself.

Some nights, if he has had too much to drink or if his insomnia has kept him up for a few days, and he finally passes out in a daze of NyQuil and benadryl, Richie will dream about Blackthorn Manor. Twenty year since that summer and the house is just as vivid in his mind as it was the day he first drove up the dirt driveway. In the dream it’s always dawn, and he’s always the only one awake. Or maybe he’s the only one there. 

Either way the house is empty. 

Tonight, though, the dream starts with him standing at the bottom of the wooden steps that lead up to the front porch. It must have rained earlier because there’s dew on the lilacs and the steps are damp. He walks up and finds the door, white paint peeling slightly, open just a smidgen. It creaks as he walks in. 

He’s looking for something, someone perhaps, but he doesn’t know what, so he walks through the house without sense. The hallways, the living room, the library, all of it cluttered and dusty. All the furniture has white sheets thrown over them. Misshapen ghosts.

The sound of his footsteps echoing off the scarred floorboards keeps him company and the smell of wisteria, drifting through open windows, is especially fragrant; the smell hangs rich and heavy in the air, mingled with the smell of bergamot, and black China tea, and the faint inky smell of beeswax polish. Everything looks like it did at the beginning of that summer twenty years ago. Yellow wallpaper curling and flaking off the walls. A breeze fluttering the moth-eaten curtains. In the breakfast nook next to the kitchen, near a low bookshelf, sits a round dining table set for seven. A pack of cigarettes—Lucky Strikes—lays open and empty next to Bev’s plate.

He knows this house better than any place he has ever lived. That stair creaks. That door gets jammed after it rains. That floorboard is loose and if you remove it there’s a stash of stale Marlboros and a dried up bottle of sangria tucked away. 

Off in another room a song starts playing. Tinny and soft; Pink Floyd’s Time. He climbs the stairs and tracks the music down to what had been his room when they had all stayed here. It looks barren without his posters and his guitar in the corner and the lights he and Bev strung up over the window one night but it still feels the same. 

The record player sits on the carlton house desk across from his bed, like it always has. He takes the needle off the vinyl and the house sits quiet again. Alive and dead. 

Vegetative.

“I thought you left,” a voice says behind him. He turns and Eddie, in his familiar too big knit sweater with the too long sleeves and his knee-high socks and yellow corduroy shorts, is standing in the doorway. He’s got a steaming cup of Earl Grey in his hands and that journal tucked under his arm, predictably. Unlike the house, Eddie looks just like he did when they had left Blackthorn. A thousand freckles, a tan on his skin, a scar on his cheek. 

The light from the window casts onto his face, illuminating his features until it’s a shock to look at him, so Richie turns away. He wonders if this is what grief is supposed to feel like or if this is just an ache for something else.

“I thought I did, too.” Richie replies. It feels more like an admission of guilt than anything. 

And suddenly he’s awake. 

* * *

“Fuck me.” Richie digs the heels of his hands into his eyes and takes a deep breath. He feels like shit and he’s fucking tired. It’s been over a week since he slept more than two or three hours a night and his head has been aching for the past three days. He sits up in his bed and flaps his hands a bit to relieve tension, trying his best not to wake up Marmalade who’s curled up beside him. 

It’s far too early to be awake right now and while he does have to be up in a few hours for some bullshit meeting he certainly won’t be able to fall asleep again. So, Richie slides onto the floor and grabs the tin. A bit of the orange paint flakes off when he grabs it, so he wipes his hands on his sweatpants and settles on the floor with his back resting against his bed. 

He only lets himself open the box is after these dreams. If he doesn’t hold himself back, if he lets himself look at them whenever he wanted to, he would risk the possibility of staring at them all day like the sentimental sap he is. And, god, that would ruin his image, wouldn’t it? 

But looking at them now, tied up in stacks with multicolored rubber bands, it’s hard to imagine a life without them. Mike and Stan sitting in the basement, showercap covered heads bent over a book. Bill’s bike leaning against a tree near the lake. Eddie sitting on the porch tying his shoe with his tongue peeking out the side of his mouth and his eyebrows drawn, bandaids over scraped knees and a streak of dirt across his cheek. Bev, with her head thrown back in laughter, and Ben, looking at her with a fond smile, ice cream cones melting and dripping down their fingers. 

Richie had started taking pictures at the start of the summer at Blackthorn and stashed them away in the tin. He had found the camera in the back of an antique store and bought it for two crumpled twenty dollar bills and a handful of nickels. It was old and smelled weird and someone put a frog sticker on the side of it and it was _ his _. 

As soon as he got out of the store he had scratched his name on the bottom with his keys and took the ‘I love Derry’s Ice Cream Parlor’ button Bev had given him off of his jacket and pinned it to the strap around his neck. 

He had liked the sound the camera made. Like the tick of a watch and the familiar hum of a record. _ Click _ . _ Whirr _ . You were here, you existed here. _ Click _ . Here, you existed. _ Whirr _. A physical record of a state of being in one moment, and the death of it the next. but the person you were then is dead now. A reminder that he can never go back. A collection of gravestones. 

His favorite photo, though, sits on his bedside table, nestled between the pages of his copy of Calder’s _ Dead Boys _. He had taken it during movie night sometime towards the end of their stay at Blackthorn. The rest of the Losers had fallen asleep—Bev, on the couch with her arm propping up her head against the armrest, Mike with his head in her lap and Ben tucked into the corner to her left, leaning over the armrest. Bill and Stan had both squeezed into the loveseat across from Richie and Stan, twenty minutes into the movie, had fallen asleep on Bill’s shoulder with the bowl of popcorn sitting precariously in his lap. Bill drifted off soon after with his cheek rested on top of Stan’s curls.

Eddie had been the only one still awake besides Richie. He was bleary-eyed from the late hour and wrapped up in a blanket and one of Richie’s sweatshirts that Richie had thrown at him because he couldn’t stop complaining about how cold it was. He was sitting on the floor with his back against Richie’s chair but turned around at the sound of Richie pulling his camera out.

In the photo, Eddie is slightly washed out from the camera’s flash while everyone else is a silhouette, and he’s looking at Richie instead of the camera. His smile and eyes are soft and Richie wants nothing more than to see Eddie like that for the rest of his life. 

The gravestone for this one reads ‘HERE LIES YOUR CHILDHOOD, GONE TOO SOON. IT WILL NOT REST IN PEACE AND NEITHER WILL YOU.’ 

Richie slams the lid back on the tin and tosses the thing back under the bed. It doesn’t matter how long it’s been; it still hurts. 

Marmalade meows right into his ear and jumps off the bed onto his lap. 

“Fuck! Shit! You scared me you sadistic little shit, what the fuck!”

Marmalade pushes against his chin and meows again. If Richie had any mind at all he’d take her out back and lock the door but he’s never had the heart. She’s twice as big as she was when Mike had found her as kitten cowering underneath the back porch—drenched from the rain and missing half an ear. Eddie and Bev had doted on the thing; knitting her little sweaters and letting her sit on top of their shoulders or sleep in their beds but Marm hadn’t taken to Richie. Or him to her. That was fine by him; any more than five minutes of snuggling with the cat would have ended up with him sneezing up a storm and breaking into hives. They had tolerated each other well enough. Marmalade would leave him be and he’d feed her the occasional tablescrap. It was a good deal. Quid pro quo and all that shit. 

“Hey there, Marm,” Richie says and pets her, “What’s new pussycat?”

Marmalade was a stupid name for a cat in Richie’s opinion but Stan had made it official when he tied a bottle cap loosely around her neck with twine and messily scrawled her name on it in sharpie. It was fitting, he supposes, but Galactica would have been cooler. Or The Hulk. Marmalade replies with a purr and trots over to the door, only turning around to make sure he’s following as she left his bedroom.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming you mangy beast, stop getting your tail in a twist.”

How he got stuck with her is beyond him. At least modern medicine made it so that he wouldn’t die just because he held her for more than a couple minutes. He grabs _ Dead Boys _ off his nightstand. Marmalade has jumped up onto the island by the time he gets to the kitchen and is meowing at him so he opens the fridge and grabs two slices of ham, shoving one in his mouth and tossing the other next to Marmalade to shut her up.

“There you go, m’lady.” he says, bowing. He walks to the front door and puts on his jacket, grabs his keys and wallet, and tucks_ Dead Boys _ under his arm. He pats his pockets to make sure he’s got a pack of Lucky Strikes. “Now, if you allow me, Your Royal Nuisance, I’m going to go for a walk. Please do not tear up the toilet paper this time; it’s my last roll and I don’t feel like going to the store right now.”

Marmalade ignores him for the ham. 

“Sounds about right. Alright, farewell demon cat.” 

He’s tired and his head hurts and there’s something not quite real about any of this, like he is dreaming still. He pulls the picture of the losers out of the book and sticks it in his wallet. 

Bev. Stan. Mike. Ben. Bill. Eds. 

All of them, somehow, came together. They did not nor have they ever held anything in common, nothing except the absence of a home to go to and a summer trapped in a decrepit pseudo-mansion. And if love is a thing held in common, he supposes they had that in common, too. 

He lights up a cigarette and heads out the door.


	2. i: pocket full of posie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter feels more like filler than anything. i'm not happy with it. oh well. c'est la vie.

**chapter i: pocket full of posie**

“It was a mistake to think of houses, old houses, as being empty. They were filled with memories, with the faded echoes of voices. Drops of tears, drops of blood, the ring of laughter, the edge of tempers that had ebbed and flowed between the walls, into the walls, over the years. Wasn't it, after all, a kind of life? And there were houses, he knew it, that breathed. They carried in their wood and stone, their brick and mortar a kind of ego that was nearly, very nearly, human.”

— _Nora Roberts,_ _Key of Knowledge_

* * *

May 8th 1996. Somewhere in the middle of buttfuck Maine. 

According to Beverly’s limited knowledge, Blackthorn Manor was built in 1897 a stone’s throw from Hampden lake, which had proved to be a disastrous location from the start. The house had flooded no less than three times in the first ten years before someone decided it was probably a good idea to build a dam. But the damage had been done; floorboards warped, a patch of european naiads grow incessantly in a damp corner of the basement, no matter how many times they’re pulled or how much pesticides are poured over them, and the house seems to be at a permanent tilt. 

The original owners were quick to get rid of it; the house was passed, sold, encumbered upon, and gifted to different families until it landed under the Marsh’s ownership. Though, how exactly the Marsh’s came to possess Blackthorn is still unknown. Apparently filing paperwork is something not every government official is particularly keen on.

Over the phone Beverly had told Richie that other than the fact that Blackthorn is old and has a few problems, it’s spacious; built for a large and somewhat well-off family in mind. Ben — an avid architect and one of the boys Bev had told Richie is tagging along with them — is apparently beyond excited at the prospect of getting his hands on the original blueprints. 

Go figure. 

Richie had mostly tuned out at that point. 

Ben and Bev’s two dorm neighbors, Bill and Eddie are joining Bev for the drive up while Richie is driving Stan and Mike, who Stan had met in one of his classes and has quickly become Richie’s favorite person. They planned on meeting up at a 24/7 diner in the small town not far from Blackthorn called Monmouth Falls for dinner and driving the rest of the way up together.

But, the drive to Monmouth Falls takes far longer than Richie had initially anticipated, even with little traffic and good music. He had planned the route over the phone with Bev a few days prior; getting out a map of Maine and tracing the route up with a red marker and debating with her which highway was quickest. 

Normally, calling Bev was one of his favorite things but the front office refused to let him use their phone, so he was forced to use the student one which costs a whopping 50 cents to use and is perpetually covered in some unidentifiable grease.

It was unpleasant to say the least. 

Stan, who has been conveniently distracted by his book most of the way up, is no help during the drive, but Mike, the angel, has been trying his best to read the map. In the end, Mike ends up driving while Richie directs.

But they’re in Monmouth Falls now; safe and relatively sound. 

They find the diner quickly— it’s hard to miss when there’s a glaring neon sign proclaiming ‘MENDL’S DINER. FOOD FOR FAMILY, BY FAMILY. OPEN 24/7’

As soon as Mike pulls up to the curb Richie is out of the car and practically flies into the diner and Bev jumps out of the booth and runs to him as soon as he’s through the door. He catches her in his arms and twirls her around, smiling into her hair.

“Hey, Carrottop.”

“You’re late, Trashmouth,” she says, giggling.

He spins her around once more and puts her down but keeps holding her. It’s only been a couple days since they talked over the phone but god, seeing her — with her floral shirt and bright eyes — reminds him how long it’s been since they’ve been in the same room.

“Fuck, I’ve missed you,” he whispers against her shoulder.

“Gone soft on me already, loverboy?” She pulls away to get a good look at him. “I’ve missed you too. God, when was the last time you cleaned these?”

Bev swipes his glasses off his face, pointedly ignoring his  _ ‘hey!’ _ and cleans them off on her shirt.

“There you go,” she says and places his glasses back on. “Now you’re ready to meet everyone. Where are the other two?”

As if on cue, Stan and Mike walk in and Bev gives Stan the same run-hug-i-missed-you routine with him before she gets her eyes on Mike.

“Hello, Ms. Marsh” Mike says, holding out a hand. 

“And you must be Mike,” she bypasses the handshake and pulls him into a hug. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. All good things, I hope?” Mike asks when she pulls away.

“Nothing but high praise from my boys here. Come on, let’s go meet everyone. The only one we’re missing is Eddie though he should be coming up in a week or so. He got a call from his mother saying that he needed to go back home for a bit.”

Bev had told Richie plenty about ‘everyone’ during their phone calls. There’s Bill, the writer with a chip on his shoulder and a savior complex. Eddie, the engineering major that rooms with Bill and captains the track team. Ben, the architecture major Bev met in design class who she refers to as ‘sweet’ and ‘charming’ and ‘the best person she’s ever met’. 

Which,  _ ouch _ , what a mean thing to say to the guy that was your prom date for four years. But they sound like a good bunch, all around. 

“Everyone, this is Stan, Mike, and Richie.” she says pointing to each of them. “Guys, this is almost everyone.”

* * *

All of them have forgotten why exactly they’re there, sitting in a sticky red vinyl booth that smells a little too much like maple syrup, greasy fingered and half drunk with laughter, by the time Ben pipes up with a question.

“How long has it been since someone lived in Blackthorn?”

“I think the last time I visited was a little over a decade ago, jesus. After my uncle and my mom stopped talking to each other I don’t think any of us have been back up but my uncle has had it ever since my grandpa died. He just wants it cleaned up now that he’s got kiddos running around and it shouldn’t be that bad; we’ll have it fixed up in no time,” Bev says. 

“What, my beautiful best friend and love of my life,” Richie interjects, leaning over the table to look directly into her eyes, “the ever-loving fuck do you mean by that?”

She pushes his face away.

“Right, well. I might have lied to you about why exactly we’re here. We may or may not be tasked with fixing this place up for the summer.”

Hook, meet line and sinker, aka Richie Fucking Tozier.

“Are you for real?”

“Yep,” she says, popping the ‘p’ like bubblegum. 

“Did everyone but me know?” Richie looks around the table for another poor, betrayed soul but everyone nods; first of all, ouch, second of all,  _ ouch _ . He groans and throws himself over Stan’s shoulder.

“ _ Et-tu, Brute? _ ” He asks him.

“ _ Sheathe your dagger. _ ”

“ _ There’s no such thing, _ ” he says in his best Dramatic-Shakespearen-Thespian accent. Which, in his humble and completely unbiased opinion, is pretty fucking good. Stan pushes him off until he’s splayed over the back of the booth and Richie clutches at his chest in anguish, “ _ Tis the bloody business which informs thus to mine eyes. _ ”

“Wrong play,” Stan says, grinning. He reaches over so quickly that Richie can’t see what he’s doing and steals the last of Richie’s fries and snatches his milkshake away. “and you might want to workshop that Voice.”

Richie sticks out his tongue and flips him off.

“Very mature.”

“You guys could’ve just told me,” he whines.

“Of course we couldn’t; you wouldn’t have come otherwise.”

“Well—” Bev levels him with a look. He groans and gives in. “Yeah, probably not.”

“That’s what I thought,” she replies.

“I hate you.” He says, pointing at Stan, then to Bev, “and you. The only one I trust out of this festering pile of liars is Mike because it probably killed him not to tell me. I don’t know about these other two, though.” He gestures to Ben and Bill who are looking at him like he’s grown three heads.

Stan throws a balled up straw wrapper at him.

“Buck up, drama queen. All that is gold does not glitter or whatever.”

* * *

Richie supposes he had expected, or perhaps had dreaded, something...else entirely. Beverly hadn’t quite explained what it would be like up there; only telling Richie her uncle had a summer house in upstate Maine that she and a few others were heading up to for the summer, and he, Stan, and anyone they wanted to invite were welcome to come.

He hadn’t needed much convincing and his parents were more than supportive of him spending the summer somewhere other than holed up in his room or the arcade and the fact that he’d be spending it with Stan and Bev delighted them even more. His dad still seems half convinced that Bev and him have been dating since middle school.

What Bev hadn’t mentioned, though, was how fucking far away this place is. It’s another half-hour drive from Monmouth and Richie is desperately trying to focus on the gentle pitter-patter of rain on the windshield. It’s calming but not quite enough. He shouldn’t have had that milkshake and Coke. And ice cream sundae. He feels jittery all over and his leg is restless in the passenger seat.

He taps a pattern against his thigh. 

The road is unpaved and the street lanterns unlit. Stone pillars half drowned in hawthorn, huge wrought-iron gates flaking with rust and hanging drunkenly off their hinges open to a winding dirt road. 

The nearer they get, the more it feels like he has slipped between the pages of a storybook. 

It’s when he finally sees Blackthorn that everything becomes suddenly, almost painfully, real. Sharp. The house looks as if it had grown there, amongst everything else; lilacs curl through the stair railings and ivy climbs up the sides and enormous willow trees droop over the roof in a gambrel of branches. Mother nature pulling the house back into herself and tucking it away.

He turns to meet Mike’s eyes once they park.

“I swear to god if I get murked by Norman fucking Bates I’m haunting you both.”

“Shut the fuck up, Richie.” comes from the back seat. 

“I’d be a great ghost, Stan the Man,” he replies, bouncing out of the car and around the back to get their bags. “Shit-your-pants-scary. Can you imagine? I could sneak into your mom’s room and get so much jack off material. Wait, do think ghosts can jack off? I don’t think I want to die if I can’t tickle my pickle every once in a while.”

“Beep fucking beep,” Mike says as he grabs his bags from Richie. He’s smiling, though, so Richie doesn’t feel too bad.

Richie likes Mike. A lot. 

He hands Stan his bags with a wink and waits until everyone else is inside to pull his camera out from his backpack. Admittedly, he’s not very good at using it despite the fact that he’s had the thing for a little over two weeks now and has been annoying Stan and Mike incessantly with it. Stan even threatened to smash the thing after Richie showed him a picture he took of him drunkenly singing  _ What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?  _ at the karaoke bar they went to for Mike’s birthday while wearing his shirt completely unbuttoned, Mike’s jacket, and some girl’s flower crown.

The rain softens the outlines of Blackthorn; the world softly blurred, a picture cast onto fog. A light turns on in the kitchen and Bev’s silhouette stains the window as she passes by. He snaps a picture and waits for it to develope before tucking it into his back pocket. The light flickers and sputters out. 

The first thing he thinks once he’s up the front steps and through the door is,  _ This place is huge.  _ The second thing he thinks is, 

“Good god, this place is a fucking disaster. Are sure we’re actually staying in this shithole? This reminds me more of Neibolt than the summer vacation house I was promised.”

“It’s really not that bad, Rich. I promise we’ll have fun.” Bev answers. “Now go put your stuff in your room. Since you took your time dilly-dallying all the rooms on the second floor are taken but there should be an open one on the third, you’ll be right next to me and Stan.”

“Oh goody.”

As soon as Bev turns around Richie looks at Ben, who’s rifling through a box of what looks like lightbulbs, points to his mouth, and sticks out his tongue in faux disgust. Ben laughs softly and he can feel himself smile back. 

“Come on,” Stan says, pushing passed Richie to the stairs with the last of his luggage and a large cardboard box, “I’ll show you up.” 

They trudge up and stop in front of a door that looks more like something out of Twin Peaks rather than merely a door for a bedroom. 

“This one’s yours. You should start unpacking; Bill and Mike are going to need some help collecting firewood in a bit.” and with that Stan closes the door to his room, leaving Richie with only the dust bunnies and the peeling floral wallpaper for company.

* * *

There’s a thick coating of dust over everything in the room. A record player sits atop a carlton desk — void of any vinyl — a metal bed frame with a mattress covered in a godawful mustard floral pattern quilt, a window looking out towards the lane leading away from the manor, a mirror warped and spotted with age. His finger leaves a path through the dust. 

He rests his guitar in the corner, throws his bags onto the floor and throws himself onto the bed. 

In all his years in college dormitories he has forgotten what it was like to live in a place with memory; this house feels weighted and soaked with it. One wrong move and he’ll fall into the life of someone else entirely. He toes his shoes off.

Maybe he should call his parents; they’ll want to know that he got here safely and will talk to him long enough to make him feel better. He taps a pattern onto his thigh; a quick country two step. 

_ Does this place even have a fucking phone? _

A mattress spring digs into his back as he wiggles around to pull the photo of Blackthorn out of his back pocket. 

If this is going to be his summer, he might as well remember it. And at least he’s going to be with both Bev and Stan again. Having to be at college without Bev these last three years has been...well it has fucking sucked. 

She clawed her way out of Derry and the clutches of her father and fought tooth and nail for a scholarship to her dream college and he couldn’t ask her to drop that. Just because he’s desperately trying to clamor back to the days when Bev would meet him behind Freese’s for a smoke and a chat or when Stan, Bev, and Richie would walk to his house after school to eat popcorn and drink root beer until the sun went down. Beyond that, beyond his own selfish reasons for wanting to beg her to join Stan and him at their college, he’s fucking proud of her. 

If anybody deserves it, it’s Bev. And if this is where she wants to spend her summer then he’ll be here too; he’d follow her to hell and back.

But, this place is too fucking dusty. 

It takes considerable effort to get off the bed. With his pocketknife he cuts along the seam of the window where it's been sealed shut by years and years of paint and fiddles with latch until he gets it open enough to lean out of and lights a smoke. Ben and Mike are standing by the side of the lane holding the last of everyone’s bags having a conversation too far away for Richie to hear but he can see Ben as he points towards the woods and says something that makes Mike laugh. 

Richie flicks the end of his cigarette and watches the ashes fall to stain the peonies below. Ring around the rosie.

He really should unpack.

* * *

They only have the few cups they brought from their dorms so they gather around the fire with mason jars, plastic spider-man cups, and chipped mugs in hand to get tipsy off the seven dollar boxed wine Richie bought at a gas station on their way up.

“All I’m saying is, is that Indiana Jones could’ve totally prevented World War Two if he had just kept the Ark out of storage and let them get to it first.” Mike says. “Belloq practically explains it all! I think I saw a Family Video back at Monmouth, if this dump has a TV and a VCR we could rent it and I can prove you losers wrong.” 

“Bev said her uncle left some supplies and money a week or so ago. I think she said something about a TV. I don’t know anything about a VCR, though,” Ben says, helpfully. 

Richie steals the bag of marshmallows from Mike’s lap, who’s sitting next to him. It’s tricky; he’s laying upside down on his back with his legs thrown across the back of the couch and his head to the floor. He pops a marshmallow into his mouth.

He puts the blue rubberband on his wrist; it’s good ammo to shoot at Stanley later.

“Speaking of our little spitfire, why the fuck is she taking so long on the phone?” he asks around the marshmallow.

“She’s calling Eddie, I think,” Bill says slowly, like he’s spacing out his words in his head and holding them in his mouth before speaking. “Hopefully his mom will let him come up.”

“She a hardass?”

Bill barks out a laugh. It’s a nice laugh. Clear, succinct, and unencumbered. Richie can feel himself grinning widely. 

“That’s one way to say it.” 

“You grew up together, correct?” Stan asks like he already knows the answer. Which, in fairness, he probably does.

“Yeah, we did. I’m just g-glad we were both able to escape to college.”

The conversation devolves into something college related which Richie is decidedly  _ not  _ interested in listening or participating in. It’s  _ summer  _ and they’ve got enough boxed wine to last them the night so the last thing he wants to think about is what classes he needs to take next year or whether or not he’s going to grad school like he’s sitting across some distant relative at the adult table at Thanksgiving dinner.

“Where’s the phone?” He asks, he’s getting a bit light-headed from being upside down for so long and he needs something to do. 

“Kitchen.” Stan answers, not looking at him and barely breaking out of his conversation with the others. Richie takes the bag of marshmallows as a hostage. 

Bev raises an eyebrow at him as he walks into the kitchen but keeps talking. She’s leaning against the doorframe to the hallway that leads to the front entrance and she’s got her finger wrapped in the phone cord like she’s the lead in some high school romcom. A real Sam Baker. 

“No, that’s okay...Are you sure?...About a 45 minute drive, maybe an hour?” Richie grins and hoists himself up onto the counter. “...Sounds good!...We’re all very excited for you to come up. Bill and I are going to tackle your room soon and make sure it’s all set for you...”

Richie throws a marshmallow at her but it lands next to her feet. Better than a stormtrooper though. She flips him off anyways. 

“Seriously, it’s not that big of a deal; besides, we’ll be doing that kinda stuff all summer…” Her face turns sour at something the person on the other end says. “No, no, it’s okay Eddie, yeah, go ahead… Love ya babe.”

Bev hangs up the landline with a click and starts walking back to the others. Richie follows. 

“I’m going to pick up Eddie at the bus station next Wednesday. Richie, you’re coming with me.”

“Why does it sound like I’m being detained? Why isn’t Bill going? I thought they were childhood besties?” Richie says, reclaiming his spot next to Mike while Bev squeezes herself into the loveseat with Stan. 

“They are, but you’re the only one here with decent music taste and I will not be spending the hour long drive listening to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.”

There’s a “ _ Hey! _ ” from across the room where Bill is pouring himself some more wine but Bev ignores him to send a wink to a now blushing Ben. Interesting. 

“Aw shucks, Miss Scaaaawlett! You got me blushin’ like a gosh darn apple tree. It ain’t everyday that a tramp like me gets ta be the favorite of such a swell dame such as yourself.” Richie rests his chin in his hands and bats his eyelashes at her. 

Stan refills his Garfield mug with wine and takes a big gulp. 

* * *

It’s nearing one am when Mike holds up his jar with a smile, the fire dancing in the dark of the wine making it pulse with life. They’re all a little more than tipsy and their fingers are sticky with chocolate and sugar and someone put a Talking Heads tape in Ben’s boombox so their laughter fades in and out of  _ Road To Nowhere _ . 

“To summer?” he asks. 

“To summer!” they cheer back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> huge, loving thank you to mia who has dealt with me screaming to her about this godforsaken chapter. 
> 
> i genuinely didn't mean for this chapter to take two whole fucking months but the holidays definitely got to me.  
and i suck at writing. so.
> 
> **teaser for the next chapter:**  
Eddie Kaspbrak is no stranger to wanting.  
At six years old, his mother tells him he’s fragile. The word drips from her mouth like it’s something unfortunate, something inescapable, something to be savoured under her tongue like a strawberry sweet. His hand is on the doorknob, halfway turned to escape into the backyard to play in the rain-fresh grass but the hand on his shoulder steers him away while the word bounces around his head.   
_Fragile, fragile, fragile._

**Author's Note:**

> next chapter: we hop in the delorean and leave behind 2016 to travel to the summer of 1996
> 
> if you'd like to stalk me or tell me to hurry up and post the next chapter:  
[main tumblr](https://rosesburnedalive.tumblr.com/)  
[art tumblr](https://owlpip.tumblr.com/)  
[stan twitter](https://twitter.com/thecriesofroses)
> 
> i also made a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2an15Q7DbqL71GWqm0n57h?si=TBNz9lTgSJagEWIxcF01KQ) and a [pinterest board](https://www.pinterest.com/evabumblebee/wormwood-and-wire/) for this fic because i like to pretend that i'm productive when i'm procrastinating


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